[boost] Re: Serialization Library Review

From: Thomas Matelich (tmatelich_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-11-15 11:05:18

Disclaimer:  I haven't read any other reviews or much of the discussion of
this library so I can't say if my issues have already been covered.

Serialization Review

I haven't participated in any reviews for a long time, so I thought I'd
tackle this one.  Conveniently, I had a little tool that was ready for some
serialization, all it has is a vector of objects which each have another
subvector of strings, give or take.  I read the introduction and skimmed the
tutorial.  I jumped in and wrote my save function.  And that is where my
review ends.  You see, I was working on MSVC 6 sp 5, and apparently, it is
not supported.  Granted, I only gave it a half hearted try.

The first error I received was from void_cast.hpp from

    // without the following tweak - builds with /Ob2 - ie release builds
    // will crash in serialization_imp.hpp
    #ifdef BOOST_MSVC
    __declspec(noinline)
    #endif

which gave:
.\boost/void_cast.hpp(179) : error C2485: 'noinline' : unrecognized extended
attribute
        .\boost/void_cast.hpp(184) : see reference to class template
instantiation
'boost::void_cast_detail::void_caster_primitive<DIRECTION,FROM,TO>' being
compiled

I happily commented it out since this tool would only be used with debug
builds.

Continuing on, I recieved several:

.\boost/serialization/archive.hpp(184) : error C2061: syntax error :
identifier 'T'

and a couple like:

.\boost/serialization/archive.hpp(196) : error C2535: 'void __thiscall
boost::basic_oarchive::register_type(void)' : member function already
defined or declared
        .\boost/serialization/archive.hpp(185) : see declaration of
'register_type'

Anyway, seemed like a nice package for general use.  My company is currently
in love with XML, so I probably wouldn't be using it for our commercial
products.

The documentation seems fairly clear, though I would strike the comment
about Holub.

My vote is neutral-positive.  I am in favor of a library supporting this,
but I didn't spend enough time on it to say for sure that this is the one.

Tom Matelich

//pardon the disclaimer...